Effects of Ground-State Correlations on High Energy Scattering off Nuclei: the Case of the Total Neutron-Nucleus Cross Section

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive, parameter-free calculation of the total neutron-nucleus cross section at high energies, incorporating various nucleon-nucleon correlations and shadowing effects, revealing their significant impact.

Contribution

It introduces the first calculation that simultaneously includes central, spin, isospin, and tensor NN correlations along with shadowing corrections for high energy scattering.

Findings

NN correlations significantly affect high energy scattering results.

The approach accurately describes nuclei from helium to lead.

Shadowing corrections are essential for precise cross section calculations.

Abstract

With the aim at quantitatively investigating the longstanding problem concerning the effect of short range nucleon-nucleon correlations on scattering processes at high energies, the total neutron-nucleus cross section is calculated within a parameter-free approach which, for the first time, takes into account, simultaneously, central, spin, isospin and tensor nucleon-nucleon (NN) correlations, and Glauber elastic and Gribov inelastic shadowing corrections. Nuclei ranging from 4He to 208Pb and incident neutron momenta in the range 3 GeV/c - 300 GeV/c are considered; the commonly used approach which approximates the square of the nuclear wave function by a product of one-body densities is carefully analyzed, showing that NN correlations can play a non-negligible role in high energy scattering off nuclei.